*Photo: President Bola Tinubu *
The recent directive issued by President Bola Tinubu, ordering the immediate withdrawal of police officers attached to Very Important Persons (VIPs) across Nigeria, represents a potentially historic juncture in the nation’s efforts to fundamentally recalibrate its internal security priorities.
For countless decades, the endemic practice of deploying thousands of trained police personnel to guard a select, privileged few, political office holders, wealthy business moguls, and even their extended families and celebrity associates, has stood as a profound symbol of the structural dysfunction within Nigeria’s security apparatus.
This egregious misallocation of scarce security resources has long been perceived as a stark and unacceptable disconnect between the ruling elite and the vast majority of ordinary citizens, whose lives and properties remain desperately vulnerable to the escalating scourges of kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism that plague the country.
The President’s foundational rationale for this directive is both commendable and entirely sound, resonating deeply with the widespread yearning of the populace: to decisively boost police presence in communities, particularly in the remote and critically underserved areas where police stations are notoriously understaffed and citizens confront the greatest existential threats.
The Nigerian Police Force (NPF) is, by its constitutional definition, mandated to protect the lives and property of all citizens, and its primary training and resources are intended for this mass responsibility, not for the exclusive security detail of a privileged, infinitesimally small fraction of the population.
By successfully reassigning these thousands of officers back to their core duties, the administration aims to fundamentally fortify the frontline of community policing and enhance the general safety net for those who are most vulnerable and unprotected.
However, the effective execution of this necessary reform is already beleaguered by the inherent complexities of Nigerian political reality, harbouring a significant risk of undermining the entire effort before it truly begins.
President Tinubu’s subsequent clarification, that he would “make exceptional provision for them [the exposed VIPs] and civil defence are equally armed,” and that the Minister of Interior should liaise with the security agencies to “replace those police officers, who are on special security duties. So that you don’t leave people exposed”, introduces a potentially fatal loophole into an otherwise decisive policy.
This analysis offers a detailed and objective examination of the President’s directive, rigorously interrogating the political and security implications of making any exceptions, asserting the non-negotiable imperative for universal and uncompromising compliance, and advocating for a comprehensive, multi-layered overhaul of Nigeria’s security architecture, which begins with the urgent and total demilitarisation of VIP protection.
The Problem of Police Misallocation: A National Disgrace
The deployment of police officers as de facto private bodyguards for VIPs has metastasised beyond a mere policy failure into a national disgrace and a major operational impediment to effective, modern policing. Reliable estimates have frequently placed the number of police officers attached to VIPs at tens of thousands, a staggeringly high figure given the country’s severe and chronic manpower deficit in the police force. For a nation wrestling with pervasive internal insecurity and possessing a police-to-citizen ratio that falls drastically below the United Nations-recommended standard (often cited as one officer per 450 people), this massive diversion of professional personnel is nothing less than criminal negligence towards the security interests of the broader public.
The core and essential training of a police officer is rigorously focused on law enforcement, crime prevention, criminal investigation, and community safety. These vital skills are not only diluted but are fundamentally wasted when officers are reduced to performing menial tasks for their ‘principals,’ such as carrying personal belongings, running private errands, or simply standing as decorative status symbols. This practice does not merely deplete the operational strength of the national police force; it fundamentally undermines its professional ethos and public perception. The crucial image of the police as an impartial force for public order and safety is severely compromised and distorted when its armed officers are visibly and continually serving the private interests of a privileged few high-profile figures.
The President’s initial directive was a brave and long-overdue acknowledgment of this deep-seated structural flaw. The objective is far beyond just freeing up personnel; it is to restore the dignity, focus, and purpose of the NPF, thereby allowing it to concentrate on its primary constitutional mandate of public security, especially in the rural and outlying areas ravaged by banditry and kidnapping. The need for a robust and visible police presence in communities across Nigeria cannot be overstated, as the local police station often remains the first, and frequently the only, official recourse for citizens in moments of distress and crisis.
The Peril of Exceptions: Undermining a Critical Reform
The President’s subsequent statement regarding the need for “exceptional provision” for “exposed” VIPs, while presented as pragmatic and sensitive to the alleged personal risks faced by high-profile individuals, carries within it the destructive potential to torpedo the entire reform effort. As Senator Abdul Ningi’s public protest highlighted with powerful clarity, the very moment a directive of this nature is issued without a simultaneous commitment to strict, immediate, and universal compliance, the entrenched Nigerian culture of privilege, impunity, and arbitrary application of rules ensures its ultimate failure. Senator Ningi, protesting the withdrawal of his lone orderly, quickly observed that “other political office holders and private individuals continued to enjoy police cover,” noting with specific examples that he saw ministers with “lots of security personnel” and “business people, Chinese and other business concerns, yesterday, with their compliments of orderlies,” alongside “daughters and sons of political office holders” and even “singers having orderlies.”
This powerful anecdote serves as a searing illustration of the systemic corruption and deep-seated abuse inherent in the police escort system. When it comes to the powerful, the exceptions quickly become the rule, and compliance is often selectively reserved for those less politically influential or those targeted to be made a “scapegoat.”
Once a mechanism for “exceptional provision” is permitted to exist, it immediately becomes a susceptible point for political pressure, patronage, and corruption. The vague criteria for being considered “exposed” will inevitably be stretched and abused to accommodate virtually any VIP with the right political connections, rendering the initial withdrawal a temporary, purely cosmetic exercise. Crucially, public faith in the entire reform hinges on the perception that no one, regardless of power or wealth, is above the law. If citizens observe the reform being applied to some but not to the most powerful figures, the popular legitimacy and moral authority of the directive will instantly vanish. This reinforces the dangerous and demoralising idea that the state’s entire security apparatus is fundamentally an instrument for elite protection, only being grudgingly extended to the common man when it is politically expedient or unavoidable.
Moreover, even a seemingly small number of “exceptional” VIPs will still demand several thousand police officers when considering the standard rotation and layering of a security detail. This substantial number of diverted personnel continues to severely detract from the frontline manpower urgently needed to fight communal insecurity, thereby entirely defeating the core objective of the President’s directive.
The President must therefore adopt an uncompromising, non-negotiable stance: there can be ‘no exceptions’ for police escort. The lives and properties of the millions of ordinary citizens under constant, existential threat from banditry, kidnapping, and communal violence are, without any shadow of a doubt, more important than the convenience, the personal status, or the perceived exposure of any single VIP, no matter how politically or economically influential they may be.
The Commercialisation of Security: A Hidden Drain on Public Safety
The structural failure in the equitable deployment of police personnel is further compounded by an insidious and often concealed practice: the commercialisation of security details. Beyond the official, but often abused, attachment of officers to statutory office holders, the Nigerian Police Force has developed a lucrative, albeit highly unethical and questionable, internal revenue stream by leasing its trained personnel to private individuals who possess the financial capacity to afford the service. This practice is widespread, including prominent business moguls, popular musicians, high-profile movie stars, and other wealthy individuals seeking a visible symbol of status and protection.
This deployment-for-a-fee is frequently shrouded in informal agreements and official waivers, but its effect on the NPF’s operational integrity and public service is unambiguous: the most capable security resources of the state are effectively rented out to the highest bidder. While the NPF establishment may erroneously view this as a form of non-budgetary revenue generation, a pragmatic way to supplement often-inadequate government funding, it constitutes a profound betrayal of the public trust and a direct, unconscionable violation of the police’s core mandate.
The core issue arising from this commercialisation is multifaceted: it directly exacerbates the existing manpower shortage, as every police officer assigned for a fee to a private citizen is an officer removed from fighting crime in a high-risk community or patrolling a highway riddled with kidnappers. The sheer number of officers involved in these private details, often seen as a sprawling “retinue of officers,” significantly depletes the operational capacity of frontline divisions. This system establishes a direct and immoral competition for scarce security resources, where the purchasing power of the wealthy overrides the existential security needs of the general populace.
Furthermore, this commercialisation introduces a corrosive element of corruption, incentivising police commands to prioritise revenue generation over their constitutional duty to public safety, creating an internal ecosystem where influence and wealth determine privileged access to state protection. It erodes the dignity and professionalism of the police force, reducing officers to private bodyguards for hire and compromising their necessary impartiality in any situation involving their paying ‘principals’. For the love of the country and for the sake of public safety, this practice must cease forthwith. President Tinubu’s directive on withdrawal must be explicitly expanded to include the complete cessation of all forms of police deployment for private, commercial, and non-statutory purposes. The protection of private individuals is, and must be, the responsibility of private security firms, not the national police force. Ending this institutionalised lease system is a non-negotiable step toward restoring the police to their rightful, public-serving role.
The Viable Alternative: Leveraging the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC)
The President’s directive for the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, to make immediate arrangements for the replacement of police officers by the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) provides the most viable and immediately sustainable solution to the VIP protection dilemma.
The NSCDC is a para-military agency initially established to provide measures against threats and attacks against the nation and its citizenry, including disaster management. Over the years, its mandate has expanded, and as the President correctly noted, its officers are both trained and armed, with VIP protection now forming a legitimate component of their functional duties.
Shifting the burden of VIP protection to the NSCDC allows the police to focus purely on their core law enforcement duties. The NSCDC can be formally mandated, structured, and trained specifically for dedicated protection services, including advanced, intelligence-led close-protection operations, thereby eliminating the conflict of interest that currently plagues the NPF. Furthermore, the NSCDC’s training can be refined to meet sophisticated international standards for personal security details, moving its mandate beyond the mere provision of armed guards to encompass crucial skills like threat assessment, evasive driving techniques, emergency medical response, and high-level crisis management. This professionalisation is absolutely necessary for operating effectively within the complex Nigerian security environment.
To prevent any abuse of this new system and to ensure financial sustainability, the NSCDC VIP protection unit should operate on a strict cost-recovery model. Political office holders whose positions inherently require security detail (such as the President, Vice President, Senate President, and others stipulated by law) would continue to be covered by the state budget.
However, all other private individuals and non-essential public figures, including musicians, business leaders, and family members, should be required to pay a heavily subsidised, or even full commercial, rate for the service. This model would effectively discourage frivolous deployment and simultaneously generate vital revenue to fund the NSCDC’s operations and expansion plans. The President’s strategic push to “arm our forest guards too, take it very seriously,” is another critically important pivot that aligns with the need to utilise all armed, paramilitary structures for comprehensive community safety.
These forest guards, when properly armed, trained, and integrated with the wider security architecture, can serve as a vital deterrent against the bandits and terrorists who exploit the vast, ungoverned forest reserves as their operational base.
Leveraging the Private Security Sector: A Strategic Solution for VIP Protection and Police Redeployment
While the comprehensive debate on establishing State Police and a National Guard continues to navigate the complexities of constitutional amendment and political will, Nigeria must immediately activate “low-hanging fruits” to address the critical and dangerous imbalance in our security-to-population ratio. The solution lies in strategically reforming and robustly empowering the nation’s private security industry, allowing it to efficiently and professionally absorb the massive demand for personal and corporate protection currently serviced by the NPF.
We must draw inspiration from successful regulatory models, such as the South African structure governed by the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA). In South Africa, the private security industry operates as a formidable, strictly regulated partner to the state, not an unregulated competitor. Private security officers employed by institutions and VIPs are rigorously trained, meticulously vetted, and, in many cases, empowered with limited powers to arrest and detain suspects until state police can arrive. This institutional scaffolding ensures a high standard of professional conduct and operational effectiveness.
In Nigeria, we have historically relegated private security to an informal, often untrained and non-professional sector, viewing guards merely as passive gatekeepers. This represents a colossal wasted opportunity. To effectively facilitate the President’s directive to withdraw police escorts, the National Assembly and the Executive must collaborate urgently on a legislative framework, a bill to establish a comprehensive “Private Security Regulatory Commission” (PSRC). This commission would be mandated to establish stringent criteria for training, background checks, and professional certification, and to legislate for the arming of qualified private security guards with specific non-lethal or limited tactical weapons, appropriate for protective duties, strictly adhering to regulatory oversight.
The primary objective of this reform is to create a credible, highly capable alternative where VIPs can confidently seek protection at a fee. This formalised, premium private security market would instantly remove the need for police escorts for non-statutory protection. The transition serves multiple national interests: it complements the eventual State Policing model, the federal National Guard, and the Civil Defence Corps; it creates an estimated millions of dignified and well-paid jobs, transforming a security challenge into an economic solution; and it reinforces business confidence by providing the necessary security bedrock for enterprise. The National Assembly and the Executive must recognise the establishment of a robust, regulated private security sector as the most immediate and impactful way to implement the President’s directive.
The Imperative for a New Security Architecture: The National Guard Question
The current security crisis, characterised by non-state actors operating with devastating impunity in large swathes of the country, demands a fundamental and urgent rethinking of Nigeria’s overarching security architecture. While the withdrawal of police orderlies is an internal redeployment, the deeper, more strategic necessity is the creation of a force dedicated to internal security and crisis intervention, which decisively brings the long-debated issue of the National Guard to the fore.
A well-trained, well-equipped, and properly armed National Guard, positioned as an intermediate force between the heavily armed military and the civil police, could be the key to long-term national stabilisation. The National Guard, unlike the conventional police, would be structured and trained for a higher level of combat readiness, capable of rapid deployment and sustained, necessary operations against armed groups like bandits and terrorists. Unlike the military, which should be reserved for external defence and addressing constitutional crises, the National Guard’s primary mandate would be internal security and supporting civil authorities during large-scale emergencies.
The directive to send such a force to communities to flush out bandits, “with the military leading the onslaught,” provides a clear, decisive operational strategy. The military’s superior firepower and strategic capacity are necessary for the initial kinetic clearance of heavily fortified bandit camps, but a National Guard (or similar elite counter-insurgency force) should be the one trained to hold the territory, conduct sustained mop-up operations, and ensure a lasting security presence that allows communities to finally rebuild and the police to return to their normal civil policing duties. Furthermore, the very creation of a National Guard would empower the NPF to fully demilitarise, allowing it to focus purely on civil policing, investigation, and crime prevention, thereby fostering a community-centric police force that builds essential public trust rather than merely instilling fear.
Interrogating the Political Fallout and Compliance Challenges
The protest raised by Senator Ningi is a perfect microcosm of the political resistance and pushback the President’s directive will inevitably face from the privileged class. His assertion that the withdrawal should be “across the board” is valid, but the selective nature of the initial implementation highlights the core challenge: enforcement. The President must draw an absolute, clear line: official security for constitutional and statutory officeholders (President, Governors, Senate Leadership, etc.) is non-negotiable and must be provided solely by professional state security services (DSS and NSCDC). However, all private citizens, including business leaders, singers, and the family members of public officers, must be stripped of police escorts immediately. This era that “should become history in Nigeria” must now end. Any security they require must be privately sourced or paid for through the NSCDC’s commercial arm, or the new Private Security Regulatory Commission.
The National Assembly, in protesting the withdrawal of orderlies, is placing personal comfort above the overriding national security imperatives. The Legislative Houses (Powers and Privileges) Act 2008 cited by Senator Ningi must be interpreted within the context of the overriding constitutional mandate of the police to ensure the security of the whole nation. The Senate leadership must ensure that the outcome of any internal investigation is universal compliance, not the reinstatement of police orderlies. The only acceptable resolution is the seamless replacement of police orderlies with NSCDC personnel for all entitled legislators.
Finally, the President’s instruction for the NSA, DSS, and IGP to form a committee and review the structure and ensure the directive is “effected” must be followed up with measurable, public accountability. Weekly reports on the number of police officers redeployed from VIP duties back to frontline policing, and a mandatory public register of all VIPs still receiving state-provided security, must be mandated to prevent the directive from being subverted by political manipulation and fading into yet another failed policy statement.
A Defining Moment for Leadership and Security
President Tinubu’s directive to withdraw police escorts from VIPs is a necessary, commendable, and profoundly long-overdue step towards repositioning Nigeria’s security architecture. The core aim, to significantly strengthen police presence in vulnerable communities, is entirely consistent with the fundamental duties of a responsible government. However, the ultimate success of this critical reform hangs precariously on the absolute and non-negotiable resolve of the President to firmly resist the predictable political pressure to make exceptions.
The path forward is unequivocally clear and requires unyielding, principled leadership: there must be zero tolerance for police escorts for private individuals; there must be universal and immediate replacement of police with NSCDC for all entitled political office holders; the plan to establish and arm a dedicated counter-insurgency force, such as the National Guard, must be immediately expedited; and finally, a clear, published, and verifiable accountability mechanism must be put in place to ensure compliance and transparency. This moment is a critical test for President Tinubu’s administration. By holding firm on the principle that the collective security of the Nigerian people takes absolute precedence over the private convenience or security of the few, the government can finally begin the essential, arduous process of rebuilding public trust, professionalising its security forces, and decisively confronting the deep-seated insecurity that threatens the very foundation of the Nigerian state.
The enduring safety of the nation rests not on the number of armed guards surrounding its leaders, but on the restoration of law and order within its most vulnerable communities.